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Michael Dunn's effort to postpone trial fails

Michael Dunn is brought into the courtroom in shackles as the hearing starts. Dunn, the man accused of shooting Jordan Davis, appeared before Judge Russell Healey for a hearing in his case asking for the trial date to be moved until after the first of the year in 2014. The hearing was held in the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, FL on Thursday Aug. 15, 2013.

A Brevard man will go on trial as scheduled Feb. 3 for the murder of a Jacksonville teenager.

On Tuesday Judge Russell Healey denied a request by lawyers for Michael David Dunn to delay his criminal trial. Dunn, 47, is charged in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, a teenager whom Dunn argued with about loud music at a Southside Gate gas station.

Attorney Cory Strolla said he was spending too much of his time dealing with efforts from the media to get more information on the trial, and didn’t have time to properly prepare.

The Florida Times-Union, First Coast News and WJXT TV-4 have all motioned to intervene in the case and asked Healey to rescind an order keeping the names of the witnesses in the case and phone calls Dunn made from jail from the public.

“I’ve had to spend so much time with the media issues,” Strolla said. “I am not doing this just to delay the trial.”

But Healey told Dunn all the media issues would conclude Tuesday, and from now on he would be able to focus all of his attention on preparing for trial.

State Attorney Angela Corey, who is personally prosecuting this case, argued against delaying the trial.

“We are sympathetic to Mr. Strolla,” Corey said. “But the court has been very clear on what the deadline is.”

Healey also heard arguments that the witness list and phone calls should be released, but did not issue a ruling. He said he would release a written order by the end of the week.

The judge previously imposed an order prohibiting all discovery in the case from being released until 30 days after the prosecution handed it over to the defense. But that order was thrown out by the 1st District Court of Appeal, which ruled that Healey must release all discovery information to the public by Friday, January 25 unless an evidentiary hearing is held beforehand that determines certain material is exempt from being released under Florida public records law.

The prosecution and defense both said they don’t want that information released before the trial starts.

Strolla said releasing more information in the case would make it harder for his client to get a fair trial, a point Corey agreed with.

“Media rights do not supersede the rights of my client,” Strolla said, while adding that releasing more information might force him to request a change of venue outside of Duval County.

But Healey pointed out that no one had asked for an evidentiary hearing, and wondered if he the appellate court left him little choice but to grant the media requests.

But Corey said the media would still have to pay for the staff time it would take to produce the phone calls. Lawyers for the State Attorney’s Office have said it would take 180 hours of staff time to review the phone calls before they could be released to the public, and the media would have to pay over $6,000 for the staff time it would take to do that.

George Gabel, an attorney representing the Times-Union and First Coast News, said the media shouldn’t have to pay for the calls because the State Attorney’s Office has already reviewed them.

Corey acknowledged that they’d been reviewed, but said her staff had been looking at using them during the criminal trial, and had not reviewed them for release to the public.

Assistant State Attorney Lisa DiFranza said the office would have to review the phone calls again to redact anything that could be seen as a confession on Dunn’s part, and would also have to take any social security numbers or bank numbers that might come up during those calls because public records law prohibit those things from being released to the public.

Prosecutors estimated there were about 740 phone calls made by Dunn since he was in prison. Corey said about 10 of those calls are being looked at by her office to use against Dunn during his criminal trial.

Corey did not volunteer what was said in those phone calls.

The State Attorney has previously said that the public shouldn’t get any discovery in a criminal case before the case goes to trial, a point she reiterated Tuesday. But Gabel said that isn’t what the public records law says.

Davis was one of four black teenagers in a Dodge Durango in November 2012. Dunn, who is white, complained to the teenagers about their loud music. According to his arrest report, Dunn said he was threatened and he said he saw a gun. He fired at the Durango, killing Davis. Police never found a gun in the Durango.

Dunn, who was in town for his son’s wedding, is charged with first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. He faces life without the possibility of parole if convicted of killing Davis.